Simple Computer Based Project Time Log

Recently I've been playing around with BASH and terminal in linux more. I've also been trying to become more organized and use my time more efficiently. Since I'm not studying CS or working with computers for a living these two things usually work against each other. It's winter break for me now though, so I can play around as much as I want, and in doing so I've come up with a basic way to track time spent working on each project for my next semester.

How it works: I plug in a 1GB USB drive (smallest I have) which is labeled "Time Card". Time Card has an autorun script on it. Linux prevents this from actually running automatically, but tells me it's there with the option to run it. The autorun script launches a script from my computer which asks me which project I'm working on. The script logs the 'Time In' and, once the "Time Card" USB is removed, logs the 'Time Out' and 'Total Time Spent' in minutes, to a text file with the name of the project.

It's nothing special, but I'm a little excited about it and wanted to share. I've attached slightly modified copies as text files for anyone interested.

Yes, the idea was to make it more hardware based. This way I just have to take the USB key out and I'm done. I figured that making a more software based time card program would be easier to forget, and would be something extra cluttering up my computer workspace.

A lot of my work next semester will not actually be on the computer, so just grabbing the USB key is a super easy way to 'clock out' because the whole idea is to just log the time spent on each project in hopes that by knowing that I am logging the time, I will be more efficient in using that time.

Also, I just noticed that the file I uploaded still has commented commands from when I was tweaking it. Oops.